LABOUR chancellor John Healey opened his budget speech saying that the UK faced ‘global economic storms’ and that the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) was insisting that the imperialist war in the Middle East was driving the inflationary spiral.
Acknowledging that the war bore the main responsibility for the rapidly escalating cost of living crisis hitting millions of workers in the UK, Healey insisted: ‘We did not want this war and we rejected calls to jump into it.’
Having washed his hands of all involvement in the war started by US imperialism, Healey announced that the impact of the global crisis on the UK’s public finances has been a catastrophic increase in the interest the government is forced to pay on a national debt that has soared to £3 trillion.
The OBR forecast is predicting that the UK will spend £14 billion more on debt interests this year.
Despite this doom laden opening, Healey spent the next hour promising millions of government spending and promising to bring Britain’s finances ‘into the black’ within the next three years.
Along with these pledges, that exist entirely in the realms of Labour’s fantasy world, Healey used his budget to attempt to quell the rising opposition from the working class to picking up the bill for the war on Iran.
With millions of workers facing fuel poverty as a result of the rocketing cost of gas and oil, Healey announced that his budget would provide some ‘breathing space’ from being driven into abject poverty.
The breathing space Healey intends to give amounted to abolishing standing charges on gas bills.
These are the fixed daily fees applied to gas and electricity bills which are paid regardless of usage.
However there is a catch to this cut as costs will be added to the unit price of gas.
According to Healey and the treasury, 60 per cent of households will gain an extra £45 a year meaning that increased use of gas will result in bigger bills.
This economic sleight of hand by Healey means that it doesn’t cost the government a penny as the cost of ending the standing charge, sometime next year or ‘whenever possible’, will be shifted onto higher users of gas.
Even if 60 per cent of lower gas users gain £45 a year off their energy bills this will be a drop in the ocean with energy prices soaring to record levels.
Energy bills increased for millions of households when the regulator Ofgem increased the price cap by 4 per cent on October 1 driving the average annual bill to £1,723 a year with experts predicting that energy prices will continue to rise and force the next price cap up by 16 per cent in January 2027.
Workers will see the budget as nothing more than a holding exercise of promises to rejuvenate British capitalism that deliberately avoids the issue of where all the money to bring down the national debt is to come from.
For the ‘hard choices’ Healey and Burnham have promised to make inflicting capitalist bankruptcy on the backs of workers and their families have been put off until next year’s government spending review.
The banks, however, were satisfied that Healey had no intention of making them pay.
In a nod to the calls from Labour MPs and the TUC to ‘tax the banks’ who have recorded record profits this year, Healey announced an extra 3 per cent surcharge on banks – purely a temporary measure starting in January and ending 15 months later.
While the working class were contemptuously handed derisory peanuts, Healey and Burnham were on the phone to Ukrainian president Zelensky just minutes before the budget speech pledging to hand him £10 billion in urgent military funding for this winter.
Zelensky told Healey: ‘It’s the best day of my life’, on hearing the news.
For the working class the best day of their lives will come quickly when the TUC is forced off its knees to take action by calling a general strike to kick out the Labour government and bring in a workers government and socialism!
